


tick tock goes the clock

by melody_fox



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Supergirl (TV 2015), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Gen, come on she's super important why is the cw not including her in the "you're going to die" club, squint and you can see supercorp, what if kara was getting the same sort of warnings as barry and oliver
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-20 21:48:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21063719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melody_fox/pseuds/melody_fox
Summary: Kara gets a visit from the Monitor the day after Lex dies. She’s destined to die in Crisis just like Barry and Oliver. Unlike Oliver, she’s left to live out the rest of her life with her family and friends. And unlike Barry, she isn’t given a time frame.What is Kara going to do? Lie and cherish what time she has left with her oblivious family without her impending death looming over them, or tell them the truth and spend the last of her moments with them trying to stop the coming crisis?





	1. death comes to all, eventually

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vox_ex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vox_ex/gifts).

After game night, Kara retreats back to her apartment to think things over. Alex had told her to hold off on telling Lena for a while, and given just what had gone down with Lex, Kara is inclined to agree. She’ll tell Lena tomorrow, after they both have had some rest.

Rao, does she need to sleep. Whatever had happened with Red Daughter has completely drained Kara, her eyes heavy and droopy, every muscle in her body aching in a way it rarely does here on Earth.

She’s so tired, she almost doesn’t notice the intimidatingly familiar figure that is standing in her living room. Their back is turned to her, holding one of her table decorations in their hands.

It’s the Monitor, the man - alien, whatever he was - that had turned Barry and Oliver’s lives completely upside-down a few months ago all for a test. Her stomach turns. This man was powerful, someone not to be trifled with. Whatever he has come here to do, Kara’s ready for him. She’d go back to the phantom zone before she let the Monitor take anything Kara loved away from her.

“Come to mess up  _ my _ earth now, have you?” Her voice is steady, defiant, showing none of the fear coursing through her. 

The Monitor says nothing as he returns the glass ball to the table. He turns around to face her.

He looks the same as last time, ever mysterious and menacing.

“You heroes and your quips. You always try to show far more bravado than you have.” He makes no moves towards her, simply standing in front of her coffee table as one would a throne.

Kara sets down her purse on the table, pulling out her phone to call Alex, J’onn, the DEO, whoever she clicks on first. “Well, whatever you want, this is my home and you’re trespassing, so kindly go back to wherever the hell you came from. I don’t want anything from you.” Her finger hovers threateningly over the call button, and she glares at the Monitor, daring him to force her hand.

The Monitor holds up his hand in a placating gesture. “There is no need to call your comrades. I have not come to harm, or to fight. Simply to warn.”

Kara does not trust him. Frankly, she wants to throw him out of her apartment and make sure he never comes back. He had caused a literal world of trouble for Barry and Oliver, and had consequently gotten Kara and Clark dragged into it. She and Barry had almost died, and all for his dumb test. 

But something about this moment makes her pause, makes her listen. 

“Kara Zor-El, you fought bravely the last time we met. Your efforts were nearly sufficient to the task, though were it not for your friend Oliver Queen, you would have perished, as your scarlet companion would have. He was able to save you both last time, but at a price.”

“What?” Kara grips her phone tighter. “What did Oliver promise you?”

“The details of our agreement do not concern you, nor can you in any way change the terms. I did not come to speak of what might have been. I have come to warn you of what will be. A crisis is coming, and you will not survive it. You must gather your forces and be ready. Their efforts may yet save the rest of us.”

Kara tries to keep her incredulous look as subtle as possible. “And how do I know you’re telling me the truth? What proof do you have of my death?”

The Monitor seems to have expected this. “I thought you might ask.” Bringing his hand up, he snaps his fingers.

And everything around them changes.

No longer are they in Kara’s studio apartment. 

Kara isn’t quite sure where they are. It’s a city, or rather, had been a city. It could have been National City, or Metropolis, maybe even Central City or Star City on Barry’s Earth.

The destruction all around them makes it impossible to tell.

Kara can smell the smoke from burning cars and buildings, can feel the heat of battle lingering in the air. Whatever battle had commenced here is over now. There’s silence all around.

Except…

Someone is crying. No, several people are crying.  _ Pleading _ . 

Kara looks towards the sound, walking away from the Monitor. 

There, in the middle of what had once been a square, are several people huddled around something,  _ someone _ on the ground. 

Someone wearing blue, and a red cape.

“Kara? Please, Kara, you have to wake up.” 

It’s Alex.

_ No. No, please. _

“Please don’t make me watch this,” Kara whispers, but she can’t tear her eyes away.

Alex’s voice is trembling, silent tears falling down her face. Nia is hiding her face in Brainy’s shoulder. Lena is sobbing silently, clutching Kara’s still, bloodied hand.

J’onn has his hand on Alex’s shoulder, and James is sitting on the ground at her feet, his head in his hands.

“Kara, you can’t go!” Alex cries again and again and again, but Kara makes no moves, no sound comes from her lips. 

Kara had died.

“Enough!” Kara is crying now herself. “Take me back!”

The Monitor does as she asks, and the horrible reality of her future fades back into the walls of her apartment. The smell seems to linger, and Kara’s eyes sting as she wipes away her tears. She sits down heavily on her couch, grabbing the nearest pillow to hug.

_ She is going to die. She is actually going to die. _

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Kara looks up at the Monitor. “There’s absolutely nothing I can do to change that?

The Monitor nods. “Nothing.”

Kara’s heart sinks. “The test you put us through. This is the crisis you mentioned. I- I die in this crisis?” 

The Monitor’s face doesn’t change, remaining as emotionless and apathetic as ever. “Yes.”

“And if I don’t prepare?” 

“Then this Earth will fall, and all the rest of this universe.”

“So you’re saying I die either way.” Kara squeezes her eyes shut, a few more tears escaping. How is she going to tell Alex? How is she going to tell Lena, and James, and Clark, and oh Rao, Winn is still in the future,  _ she is never going to see him again-- _

The Monitor speaks, interrupting her train of thought. “You have cheated death several times over your lifetime. Death comes to all eventually. Why now do you fear it?”

“I don’t fear it.”

“You do. You have always feared it.”

Kara doesn’t reply to that. Yes, death scares her. It scares her because it means she’ll have to leave her friends, her family, Alex, Lena, James, Winn, J’onn, Nia, Brainy, and everyone else she had come to know and love here on Earth. If she dies, she’ll only be causing them pain. Death is an end, it is a mystery. No one knows what is waiting for those who die.

Wiping her face furiously, Kara stands, a dangerous determination flooding her body. “No, I don’t accept this. I  _ will _ find a way to survive. I don’t care if you tell me the odds of me dying are 100%, I believe in my friends, and I believe in myself. We  _ can _ win this. And we can do it  _ without _ anyone dying.”

The Monitor continues to look almost bored, her speech doing nothing to sway his words. “You can’t. And you won’t. Kara Zor-El, you have been warned. Take heed of my message. Prepare for the coming crisis, or your universe will die.”

With that last message, the Monitor disappears into the same sort of portal he had last time, leaving Kara alone in her apartment with the weight of the knowledge he had given sitting heavily on her heart.

As Kara lays in bed that night, exhausted, two questions keep her from falling asleep: is the Monitor correct? And if he was, how on earth is she supposed to tell her family?


	2. i'm fine

_ Kara Danvers has been lying to everyone in her life in some way, shape or form since the moment she landed on Earth nearly seventeen years ago. _

When people asked where she’s from, Kara would say “Midvale, California.”

(She wasn’t.)

When Eliza would ask if she was alright after a particularly loud and stressful day at school, she would say, “Yes, I’m fine.”

(She wasn’t.)

When Clark had asked if it was alright if she stayed with the Danvers instead of him, Kara replied, “Of course.”

(It wasn’t.)

When J’onn asks her if she’s alright after a particularly hard battle, she says, “J’onn, you worry too much. It takes a _lot_ more than that to ruffle my feathers.” 

(That’s usually a lie. Her ribs ache, her fists are sore, and she can’t shake the look of fear on the faces of some aliens that she could tell were just so confused, so angry and scared that they were lashing out and she was the one that had to stop them.)

When Lena had asked her to try her alien detection device, she hadn’t just lied, she’d tampered.

When Alex had killed Astra, when she had confessed and apologized, Kara had frankly forgiven her. She had hugged her and promised things were okay.

(They weren’t.)

Kara simply buries that all down and moves on. After all, what had Jeremiah and Eliza told her again and again and again growing up? 

“No one can know.”

Perhaps Kara has internalized that a little too much.

(She doesn't know how to stop lying.) 

Alex knows most everything. Lena knows only a little less. James and Winn know a little more than Lena, but not quite as much as Alex. J’onn fits in there somewhere.

But not one single person actually knows everything.

And that is really starting to weigh down on Kara.

When she’d come out as Supergirl to Winn on Catco’s roof five years ago, an invisible weight had lifted off her shoulders.

It had somehow tripled when she became friends with Lena as Kara _ and _ Supergirl at almost the same time, separately.

Now, she feels like she’s suffocating.

_ Kara Danvers can lie as easily as breathing. _

//

Kara Danvers has some rather bad coping mechanisms.

She lies to protect herself.

Kara Danvers also tends to bury herself in work when she doesn’t want to face something.

Which is where she finds herself the next morning.

Kara figures if she can get to work fifteen minutes earlier than normal, she can make it all the way to her desk without having to say good morning to Nia or James. She can’t bear to lie to them about anything today. Not today. Not yet. She isn’t ready yet.

Several hours later, she has yet to acknowledge anyone else in the room. She doesn’t have an assignment to work on, but she’d told James last week that she seriously needed to update all of her folders and logs because the last few weeks of reporting and playing hero had seriously ruined her organizational pattern.

(A few too many of those hours are spent writing letters to her loved ones. She hasn’t yet got up enough courage to make the decision to tell her friends and family, and so until then, she’s going to work on something to leave behind for them. Her mother had left her an A.I. with all of Krypton’s knowledge and no words of comfort. Kara would be damned before she does the same thing to her family.)

It’s nearly the end of the work day when Kara realizes just how much of the day has gone by.

She also realizes that lunch had come and gone and she hadn’t received any invitations to lunch from Lena. 

Which was very odd.

Over the last four years of their friendship, the two of them had grown incredibly close. Lena had become Kara’s best friend, closer even than Winn had been, and the two of them rarely went a week without at least one lunch together.

With the Lex and Red Daughter fiasco, the life of Kara Danvers had been unceremoniously pushed aside for that of Supergirl’s.

It has been two weeks since they last had lunch. 

Kara unlocks her phone and pulls up her text conversation with Lena.

It has been a week since either of them had sent anything.

That was fine. Right? Friends get busy all the time and forget to check in. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen Lena just last night.

Kara types out a text to Lena, deciding that reaching out again was better sooner rather than later.

** _Kara: _ ** _ Hey! I’m glad you came to game night last night. It’s been a crazy few weeks. I’ve missed you :) _

** _Kara:_ ** _ How about we go get something to eat after work today? That sushi place you like down on 5th? ;) _

Having successfully avoided James and Nia, the work day finished, Kara packs up to head home. She checks her phone again in the elevator, hoping to see a response from Lena.

Nothing.

Very odd indeed.

_Maybe she’s just busy, _Kara thinks to herself. Lena will get in these creative moods sometimes where she forgets everything else except what she’s working on. _It’s fine. I’m overthinking everything._

(Everything’s fine.)

//

(Everything is very much not fine, and Kara is starting to freak out.)

_ “Hey, Kara, you alright? You’ve been out and about as Supergirl all evening every night this week and I haven’t seen you since game night at J’onn’s. Just… I worry about you. Get back to me soon, please. Okay?” _

Alex has left her several voice messages, all of the same sort, and Kara is trying to figure out how to answer them.

She’s successfully avoided nearly everyone in her life that week, completely isolating herself in her attempt to not have to tell them, to not have to lie to them. She’d lied enough. 

But hiding away was not normal for Kara Danvers, and so people started to notice. Alex in particular. 

How do you tell your family that you’re going to die when you don’t know when? How do you tell them you’re going to die when you don’t even know how?

(Seems Kara doesn’t know anything these days.) 

Sitting on the roof of her apartment building, with enough drinks and snacks to feed several teenage boys, Kara stares out at National City, letting the sun warm her skin, the sounds of city life filling her ears. When she was younger, this much noise would have given her a panic attack. Actually, on her worst days it still does give her a panic attack, but she’s trying not to think about that right now.

(Her current situation is about to give her a panic attack.)

_ Okay, breathe. Everything is going to be fine. _

_ Maybe not fine. But at least you’re still alive. _

That thought is a sore spot that makes Kara stand up and start pacing in her attempt to rid it from her brain.

She needs to get out and do something. She knows she’s avoiding her problem, but what else is she supposed to do?

She should go see Lena. 

(Lena, who’s smile makes her heart sing.

Lena, who stuck by her even when she didn’t want to be Kara Danvers anymore.

Lena, who helped her want to _ be _ Kara Danvers again.)

Kara smiles at the thought, but the smile soon fades.

Lena still hasn’t responded to her text messages.

She’s been out in Metropolis all week, a necessary in-person quarterly board meeting that couldn’t possibly be missed.

Kara hasn’t felt this lonely in a long time.

Her phone ringing startles her out of her funk.

It’s Alex again.

(Kara wishes it was Lena.)

Throwing her now empty soda can with perfect, Kryptonian accuracy into the roof garbage can, Kara picks up her phone, deciding to answer it.

_ “Kara? Thank God, I’ve been trying to reach you for hours. Where are you? Are you in trouble?” _

Moment of truth. Should she? 

“No, no, Alex, I’m fine. My phone died, and I just got it working again.” The lie comes so easily. She hates the way the words flow so smoothly off her tongue. “Why, do you need me? I’ve got like, six missed calls from you.”

_“I mean, we could always do with some help somewhere, but it’s nothing we can’t handle. Besides, it’s been a rough couple of months for you, you deserve a break. I just... I hadn’t heard from you in a while. Are you doing okay?”_ Alex doesn’t sound too suspicious. Just being the normal, caring big sister she’s always been.

(Kara really needs to get her shit together.)

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so it took me forever to figure out how to end this one. it's a lot longer than the last one, and that's mostly because there's less dialogue and more character analysis
> 
> anyway, hope you liked this one. your comments on the last one are literally the reason i even decided to keep going, so thank you so so so much for the support and kind words. i love you guys!!!
> 
> also, "they know now" came first because i got the idea, busted it out, and actually finished it while i was trying to figure out the ending to this one by avoiding writing it idk why, but thanks for reading that one too :)
> 
> love you guys!!

**Author's Note:**

> so, @vox_ex had this brilliant idea that in this post https://vox-ex.tumblr.com/post/188391963812/supergirl-crisis-reveal-i-kind-of-wish-season-5-of where kara has to deal with the same sort of expiration date that barry and oliver got handed by the monitor and i decided to run with it. this is my first draft that i just wanted to get out while i had the idea in my head, so this will probably be edited in the future, but hopefully i can stick with this idea as crisis comes closer and closer.
> 
> we'll see where this takes us. there might be a chapter 2, this might be just a one shot. who knows
> 
> hope you enjoy reading!!! :)


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